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Premature infants are often hospitalized for prolonged periods and as a consequence normal early interaction between the newborn and parent is disrupted. Neonatal intensive care units have become relaxed in permitting visitation, in order to increase contact between a newborn and family. Early contact between a newborn and its parents influences caregiving behavior after hospital discharge, the occurrence of abuse and neglect, and the intellectual development and mental health of the child. Visitation to the neonatal intensive care unit has not been extensively studied. The relationship between visitation patterns to a neonatal intensive care unit, infant and family factors, and compliance with follow-up medical visits three months after birth was assessed. The study involved 164 premature newborns. The number of visitors decreased and days without visitors tended to increase between the second and twelfth days of hospitalization, and remained constant thereafter. Infants with bleeding into the brain (intraventricular hemorrhage), those with parents who were not living together, or those with a very sick mother, and infants who were not first born tended to have few visitors. As the number of days without visitors increased, the compliance with the three-month follow-up decreased. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

Abstract. The independent impacts of severe intraventricular hemorrhage, other common medical complications of prematurity, and socioeconomic status on the development in the second year of life of 32 low birth weight subjects were explored. Outcome measures included standard tests of mental and motor development, an evaluation of language competence, and an assessment of information processing ability in a habituation/recovery paradigm. Partial correlations indicated that intraventricular hemorrhage influences cognitive and motor development independently of the other predictor variables. Socioeconomic status predicted language ability and recovery of attention to a novel stimulus independent of the other predictors. Medical complications other than intraventricular hemorrhage also made an independent contribution to the variance in language outcome. Implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]